1. Statement of the Technical Field
The inventive arrangements relate to the field of data propagation, and more particularly, to formatting a communications bitstream.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a typical communications system, the priority status assigned for transmission of different data types within a bitstream is pre-determined and does not change. However, the importance of the data may indeed change. For example, in a tactical command and control system, the importance of certain types of data may vary based on a type of mission being executed. For instance, battery voltage information may have low importance during nominal operation of a particular system, but access to such information may become very important if a hardware fault occurs. Similarly, status information of a weapons system may have low to moderate importance during a search mission, but the weapons status information will be critically important during combat operations.
Methods have been developed to improve network communications, but such methods do not automatically reprioritize data transfer when the importance of data being propagated changes. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,563,517 to Bhagwat et al. (hereinafter “Bhagwat”) concerns methods, devices and systems for dynamically adjusting transcoding parameters so as to increase the benefits of transcoding. The methods of adaptation are designed to cope with the variability of network characteristics and of the size of transcoded images, but such methods do not address changing data priorities; to the contrary, a user pre-defines data priorities. Accordingly, if data were to suddenly become important due to a change in operational circumstances, the data would not be reprioritized without some level of user interaction.